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Deleting Raider's Posts
Deleting Raider's Posts has been an important issue in FPH politics since Raider first began posting, sometime in 2002. With the election of Lief Ericson in 2011 and his subsequent coup and establishment of the 40,000 Post Reich, support for Raider deletionism has risen once again, and the issue is now one of the most frequently talked about in FPH political discourse. History Origins The evolution of Raider deletionism can be traced to the emergence of anti-Raider sentiment during the first Nood-Mod War. Even after the defeat of the Noodists, anti-Raider feelings remained strong. When the first Noodists were appointed moderators in circa 2003, Lief was made moderator of the OD forum. Soon thereafter, he shared his password ("goatsex") with his good friend Theias. Theias, in his infinite wisdom, logged into Lief's account and began covertly deleting thread's Raider had created, in the process destroying literally hundreds of posts. When this was discovered, Theias was quickly banned and Lief stripped of his moderator status. For the next few years, Raider deletionism, as a political ideology, lie largely dormant. Deletionism was resurrected briefly in October of 2008, when Theias, no longer serving his ban, won election as clan leader in an upset. While Theias ran on what many observers called a "serious" platform, he had never given up his deletionist beliefs. Unfortunately, the advent of the Admin Wars and the subsequent abdication of Theias, put a halt to any nascent plans to finally fulfill the goals of Raider deletionism. Following the installation of Darkflame and the consolidation of Euro control over the clan, deletionism once again faded from FPH political discourse. By early 2011, it was not uncommon to hear open critique of Theias' brave post deletions. Revival As the April 2011 elections began, there was little enthusiasm for what was predicted to be another boring election. After all, the clan had gone down the tubes, hard, since the legendary Admin Wars. When the nominations were opened in April, it initially looked like another election between anti-deletionists was most likely. But then Lief, in a shocking announcement, threw his hat into the ring. In his first campaign speech, he gave a stirring defense of Raider deletionism, and called on the templars to support him. The post was quickly dugonged, and within ten minutes Lief had been nominated by Darkflame. Lief was initially believed to have little hope of winning the election. But his promise to delete all of Raider's posts soon spread like wildfire among the electorate. Early opinion polls, even before Lief's surge into first place, showed opinion split on the issue of deletionism, with half of respondents agreeing that Raider's posts should be eradicated.(1) Soon other candidates in the race, Soggyfrog and Nidhogg, rallied around the deletionist cause as well. In the end, Lief won with 54% of the vote, a clear mandate in favor of the cause of deletionism. Deletionism under the Lief Regime Immediately upon his swearing in, following the defeat of a Euro-Raiderist coup by out-going leader Hal, Lief set to work on the long and arduous task of deleting all of Raider's posts. Before his first impeachment, he organized the Committee to Organize the Elimination of Raider's Posts, which quickly engendered spirited debate. No longer was the idea of deleting Raider's posts an extreme one; by the spring of 2011 it has captured widespread majority support. Now the only question was not if Raider's posts should be deleted, but how? Unfortunately for the deletionist cause, Lief's illegal and treacherous impeachments put a sudden hault to organizing the elimination of every single Raider post. In the violent, chaotic weeks that followed, it was all Lief and his loyal Purpleshirts could do to keep order, brutally crack down on dissidents, and funnel untold sums of cookies into the jars of shady sporting organization bureaucrats. As such, though Raider deletionism remains central to the official ideology of the 40,000 Post Reich and is a stated goal of the regime, progress has noticeably slowed in recent months. Philosophy The philosophical underpinnings of Raider deletionism are complex and incomprehensible. Until 2011, when the ideology was more properly explained in the Umholi's Little Purple Book, the reasoning behind the need to delete all of Raider's posts was confused, arbitrary and contradictory. Some argue that Raider deletionism is nothing more than anti-Raiderism, manifested in an ugly, violent political policy. Most Raider deletionists vehemently disagree. Lief clarified the reasoning behind Raider deletionism during and after his 2011 leader campaign. In his victory speech(2), Lief clarified that deletionism had a long history, stretching back at least to Theias' first election as Purple Eminence and no doubt before that as well. He attacked Raider's posts for "using up our social services and taking away our jobs", and pointed to them as responsible for the clan's steady decay. Central to deletionist thought is the idea that Raider's posts are a disease or a cancer that has affixed itself to a once pure and noble clan. To critics who contend that, because Raider no longer posts, the continued existence of his old posts is no longer a problem, deletionists contend that Raider's posts are constantly metastasizing, corrupting and weakening the clan even though no new ones are created. Another common metaphor is Raider's posts as a sort of weight, pulling the clan down the proverbial tubes into darkness. Differences within the movement Stark differences exist within the movement on how exactly the problem of Raider's posts is to be dealt with. The most mainstream school of thought argues that all of Raider's posts must be individually deleted from every single thread, but thread's Raider started should be allowed to remain, as long as they are cleansed of Raider posts. Branching off this school are a number of increasingly extreme fringe deletionist groups. The Theiasite Deletionists argue that, in following in the footsteps of the First Deleter, Theias, Raider's threads must be deleted as well as his posts, so that nothing written by him remains on the forum. Some deletionists, so-called Quotists, argue that we should not stop with deleting only the posts made by Raider. They contend that we should look as well to any posts made by other forumers which quote Raider. These posts, they believe, must be destroyed. A splinter group, Reformed Quotists, are somewhat more moderate; in their view, these posts contained Raider quotes can be spared, but only if the offending Raider post quotes are edited out. The Accounters preach that the most sensible course of action is to delete Raider's account. They believe that once this is done, his posts will wither away and die of their own accord. The vast majority of deletionists reject this group as too liberal. Then there are the New Forum Creationists, who argue that it is too late, that the current forum is already compromised, and that even deleting every single Raider post, thread and quote is not enough. They argue that the forums must be deleted and every single post and thread rewritten and recreated, except, of course, those Raider made. In the Mythic Age, this radical sect further splintered with the emergence of by far the most extreme deletionist group, the New Apocalyptics. They argue that the FPH Clan itself cannot be saved, so great is the disease of Raider's posts. They advocate the complete and final destruction of the forum and the disbanding of the clan. Category:Philosophy